abandonware games sorted by popularity

Grand Slam Bridge is exactly what it says on the tin, which is both comforting and slightly intimidating if you are not already fluent in the mysterious language of card games. In ...

Star Crusader is a 1994 first-person space combat game that puts the player in the cockpit of a futuristic fighter and sends them into the middle of a large interstellar conflict. ...

Step into the Korean War with Conflict: Korea, where you command UN forces and discover that even in strategy games, North Korea is a problem. It follows the same system as the res...

Noctis is less of a "game" and more of a meditative ritual performed through DOS interface, with fonts so pixelated they might just be ancient runes. You play as a silent explorer ...

Vegas Gambler brings a collection of casino favourites to the home computer, allowing players to try their luck at cards and other gambling games without having to book a flight to...

S.T.U.N. Runner is a 1990 DOS conversion of Atari's futuristic arcade racer, throwing players into a high-speed world of twisting tracks, jumps, enemies, and spectacular obstacles....

By 1999, Liero had become a cult favorite thanks to its frantic real-time battles between heavily armed worms. Unlike turn-based competitors, the action never pauses, creating chao...

Released in 1986, James Bond 007: Goldfinger adapted one of the most beloved Bond stories into a text-heavy adventure experience. Rather than relying on fast reflexes, players must...

Follow the Reader (1992, DOS) is an educational oddity that feels like a kindly librarian discovered the power of DOS and decided to make literacy a competitive sport. You guide wo...

In Extremis from 1993 is one of those lesser-known titles that surprises players with its ambition. Mixing action and strategy, it places you in dangerous situations where quick th...

The Astronomy Quiz is a straightforward educational title aimed at players who enjoy looking toward the stars and then discovering how little they actually know about them. Release...

The Dame Was Loaded is a noir-flavored adventure that throws the player into a world of private investigators, suspicious characters, smoky atmospheres, and the sort of trouble tha...

In Commander Keen 5: The Armageddon Machine, Keen infiltrates a massive space station engineered to obliterate planets like it’s swatting flies. This is Keen at his most tech...

Wing Commander 3 takes the series into a more cinematic era, combining space combat with live-action sequences and a considerably more ambitious presentation. You once again face t...

No relation to Dune (except for being a total rip-off), Arrakis is a homebrew strategy game that feels like a tribute to the sandiest planet in sci-fi. You mine spice, fight vaguel...

In Battle Master (1991), you play as a heavily armored murder-hobo leading an army across a fantasy world that really doesn’t want you there. It’s part action-RPG, part...

Phantasie 1 is a 1987 role-playing game that helped establish many of the traditions later associated with computer fantasy adventures. Players create a party of heroes, explore da...

Starcross is a 1982 science-fiction text adventure from Infocom that places the player aboard a mysterious spacecraft with an intriguing and potentially dangerous problem to solve....

Released in 1985, Space Commanders 2 didn’t reinvent the wheel — it just made it spin faster. The sequel adds smoother animation, a few new enemy patterns, and a slight...

Before heroes had inventory screens and voice acting, there was Adventure in Serenia, the lovechild of a text parser and a fever dream. Released in 1982, this proto-graphic adventu...

The Beverly Hillbillies turns the television comedy into a lighthearted computer adventure built around the Clampett family and their wonderfully strange arrival in Beverly Hills. ...

Turbo OutRun brings Sega's famous arcade driving style to the home computer, putting the player behind the wheel of a fast sports car and asking a very simple question: how long ca...

The Adventures of Robin Hood takes the legendary outlaw and turns his story into a mix of strategy, action, and historical flavor. You’re not just shooting arrows; you’re manag...

Total Carnage is a wonderfully unsubtle top-down shooter in which the solution to almost every problem is to fire more ammunition. Lots more ammunition. You control heavily armed s...

Toobin turns the simple idea of floating downstream into an arcade challenge that is much less relaxing than it sounds. You control a character riding an inner tube through winding...

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

Visions of the Aftermath: The Boomtown presents a bleak vision of survival in a world that has already suffered the unpleasant consequences of civilization going spectacularly wron...

Moraff's Revenge delivers a classic dungeon-crawling role-playing adventure packed with monsters, treasure, exploration, and enough dangerous corridors to make staying home seem in...

Conqueror is what happens when a tank simulator and an arcade game go on a date and forget their purpose. You drive a tank in a pseudo-3D landscape, blow up stuff, and command squa...

Styx is a compact arcade-style adventure built around exploration, hazards, and the sort of unforgiving design that older computer games considered perfectly normal. The action tak...